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A MAN has shared his harrowing emergency room story, claiming two doctors removed the wrong organ during a routine surgery.
George Piano says he’s not the same person anymore after he and his wife filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against the University of Washington Medical Center and two of its surgeons.
Piano visited the hospital’s emergency room on December 6, complaining about stomach pains, according to the lawsuit.
He was diagnosed with appendicitis and was taken to surgery to have his appendix removed.
However, the suit claims that surgeons, Nidhi Udyavar and Paul Herman, who were named as defendants in the case, couldn’t find Piano’s appendix and removed part of his bowel instead.
“Following surgery, Mr. Piano began to experience abdominal pain which was worse than before his surgery,” said Piano’s attorneys Ed Moore and Van Shaw in a statement.
“The bowel contents began to spill into his abdominal cavity causing him to become much sicker.”
The statement added that Piano had a CT scan two days after the surgery, revealing that his appendix was never removed.
He returned to the same hospital where the organ was finally removed.
A doctor removed a piece of diverticulitis on Piano’s lower colon – not his appendix, according to the lawsuit.
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Because of this, he allegedly needed another surgery to remove a “leaky colon” and take care of an abdominal infection caused by the first surgery.
“It’s been a hell of a year,” Piano told USA Today. “I’m not the same person I was when this started.”
“When I woke up and came out of the drugs, I was in serious pain. Much worse than I had been in when I went to the hospital,” he added.
Piano said he spent 53 days in the hospital in the last year and lost about 40 pounds.
He claimed that he now has anxiety and has suffered short-term memory loss as well.
Piano and his wife, Elizabeth, initially did not want to file the lawsuit but said they decided to after getting “no response from the hospital.”
“I feel very lucky that I’m still alive,” said Piano. “We didn’t want it to happen to someone else. Someone needed to put a stop to this and take responsibility and say this happened − we need to take steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Susan Gregg, a spokesperson for the University of Washington Medicine told Today that the hospital couldn’t comment on pending litigation.
“UW Medicine strives to provide the best possible care to all of our patients; their safety and well-being is deeply important to us,” she said in a statement.
The lawsuit is seeking monetary damages and demanded a jury trial.
The U.S. Sun has reached out to UW Medicine for comment.